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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk about the steps needed to solve complex problems in your personal life and the world at large.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- In difficult times, problems come to the surface.
- Traditional approach: quickly solve the problem and be done with it.
- Problem-solving rooted in cause & effect versus system thinking.
- What is system thinking?
- “When we don’t see a system, we break it.” (Gregory Bateson)
- Avoiding problem replication through accurate diagnosis.
- System Map Drawing.
- For any change in your life/area of dissatisfaction, start looking at the system that created the current emergent.
- Meeting a problem at its actual complexity level.
- Start thinking of your own problems as systems.
- The ease of oversimplifying: even the wrinkles in our brains are becoming shallower (Book ‘The Shallows’).
- We go between indulgence/negligence (during homeostasis) and impatience/un-resourcefulness (during crises).
- Use homeostasis to train our minds in finding personal satisfaction in problem-solving.
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7 steps in the lifecycle of a problem:
- Inception (initial condition of a system)
- Identification (awareness & pain)
- Diagnostic
- Solutions (actions)
- Test-iterate (solutions)
- Maintenance
- Completion (integrated into lifestyle)
- “If I had 60minutes to save the world, I would spend 55 defining the problem.” (Einstein)
- We replace bad systems with slightly better ones.
- Vetting a solution’s effectiveness with time and scale.
- The importance of not letting yourself off the hook when things start to feel better.
- Real solutions involve behavioral change and maintenance.
- The best place to start is with yourself – how to solve problems in your own personal life.
- Connecting the dots with a Personality Type Example: “I am so different from my family”.
- Applying system thinking to your own life.
- Contributing to solving the world’s most complex problems through better thinking.
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11 comments
Thank you for this thoughtful presentation on ST. This resonates for me and is a subject I have long been interested in. These kinds of topics are, I believe, what your mission is all about, and as an INFP, I am most grateful for. I appreciate Erik Bland’s articulate comments as well.
This was a fantastic podcast!
I recently wrote to Joel and Antonia asking how my partner (ESFJ) and I (ENFP) could communicate better. We both listened to this and found it a revaluation.
I get stuck on the diagnosing, researching and iterations. I never want to commit to a solution and boring problems slam my mind shut quite quickly.
My partner tends to go for an obvious short term solution and isn’t great at working out how this could stress othe nodes in the system. And once a decision is made, it’s made. There is no alternative or backtracking.
It’s a frustrating dynamic for both of us. So having a road map to work on solutions (like , say, should we send our kids back to school the rest of the semester?) that we’ve been glitching on has so far been way smoother.
Thank you both for this. And also, I’m kind of glad you don’t bring day to day politics into this. I have so many other podcasts I enjoy doing that now and some of it is really clumsy and crowbarred in. I stick to the news podcasts for opinion like that. This podcast is my little escape.
Ok. I am very out of line for my previous comment. I apologize. I truly love your podcast and i think i just felt deeply hurt that two people I have looked up to for so long are choosing to produce content during this period and not taking a stand.
I am disappointed. But it is your platform, your business, and you can do what you like.
I wrote that comment with the assumption that you actually like black people and believe that their lives matter. But how do i know? I don’t know you personally. For all i know, maybe you totally hate them lol
My feelings and perspective haven’t changed from my previous comment. but i could have communicated better (and definitely used spellcheck).
Again, I apologize for attacking you. Good luck with towing the middle line and trying to keep everybody happy.
As an African American male what if, I was offended by your comments Bob? My Fi doesn’t flair up much, but it did when I read some of the comments on here.
Simplified Systems thinking below. Strong Te users would probably see it like this.
Question -> inputs + nodes = output ->desired output?
The fact that people choose to use systems thinking gives you the space to use systems thinking. XD
My dad past away due to CoVID-19 and part of my grieving process was understanding what an extrovert he is, and how many people he came in contact with because of his natural inclination to meet people, his eagerness to shake hands, give hugs, his job that made him travel around the state, the fact that he didn’t keep hand sanitizer in his car. All these things and more culminated to his death. Its just a way to process information that won’t leave you so triggered.
Thank you, that’s a very helpful framework! I have been trying to use it to diagnose the problems I have in my life, not super successfully yet though.
My small nitpick is that I don’t really see how there would not be cause and effect, like you assert every time you talk about systems thinking. A system to me seems like a network of causes and effects!
By the way, I love that you continue to leave daily politics out of the podcast, and instead talk about something more universally applicable that you have a wise, unique and insightful perspective about. (I think almost everyone (myself included) sounds like an idiot when talking about politics.)